As small business owners grow their business online, at some point they eventually may need to transfer their website. Changing anything can be difficult and that’s especially true when it comes to transferring your website. Whatever type of website you have, online store, or custom web web development, transferring to a new website solution can be difficult.
Here are the top 5 challenges to consider when it comes to transferring your website.
- Website content and products transfer
- Maintaining SEO rankings
- Domain Name Settings
- Email settings
- SSL Security
Transferring Content
Transferring your website content can be a big ordeal, a huge headache and come with big costs to get it done correctly by hand. First off, the complexity of transferring your website content is in the question… how much content is there to transfer? At the easier end of the spectrum is transferring a simple website or blog and at the harder end is transferring an ecommerce or online store website with a lot of products and pages.
Some important questions to consider about your new website solution and how to transfer your content:
- Will your new website solution help you transfer the content or do it all for you
- Can you export your content from your old solution and import it into the new solution
- Will your new website offer FTP access so you can possibly transfer content more easily
- Do you want to set all your content up from scratch yourself by copying and pasting and fixing the issues on your own
Maintaining SEO Rankings
Not many web site solutions speak about this, but you can maintain your old website rankings when transferring to a new website solution. This can be a big deal because your high ranked search engine pages may come up with a 404 not found or just point point back to your home page after your transfer your website.
Maintaining your SEO rankings can be achieved a few different ways, here are a few questions to consider:
- Will your new website solution provide some way to maintain important website rankings
- Can you maintain the old URLS through the transfer to the new website solution without any major changes
- Can you implement clever 301 redirecting of the old URLS to new URLS
Domain Name Settings
Updating your domain name settings is easy but there are a few snafus that we’ve seen our merchants run into. Here are some things to consider when it comes time to transfer your website and update your domain name settings.
- Do you have the login information for your account with your domain name registrar
- Will your new website solution migrate any important domain name record settings for you
- You should know how to update your domain name DNS information if your new website solution will not do that for you
Email Settings
Again, this will depend on how many email accounts you have existing on your website. If you have a bunch of email accounts that you use with your old website then it will be important to maintain them during the website transfer. If you only have one or a handful of accounts then it is just less tedious. There are also a few other considerations when it comes to transferring emails settings such as:
- Do you use a 3rd party email service like gmail or other email provider with your website and not the website’s own email account?
- If you use a 3rd party email service, then your MX records and other important email records must be maintained during the transfer typically by the new website solution.
- If you use your website’s own email accounts then they must be created in the new website email system
SSL Security
For merchants with eCommerce websites and online stores, you must consider whether your website SSL security certificate can be transferred or if you will need a new one. Here are some things to consider about transferring your website SSL security certificate.
- Will your new website solution transfer your existing SSL security certificate for you and do you have access to do it yourself if needed
- If you have a higher end SSL security certificate such as Extended Validation (EV SSL) then you will definitely want to transfer it instead of purchasing a new one
- Does your new website solution offer low cost name brand SSL security certificate or no cost certificates or your first year SSL security for free or other promotion that may help offset related SSL security costs
Earth Skater specializes in eCommerce with complimentary website setup and transfer. We’ve helped hundreds of merchants make an easy transition to a flexible and full featured website and online store platform.
